1,720,980 research outputs found
Using Google Talks in ESP educational settings: A multimodal approach
No full textThis study analyses a small specialized corpus consisting of 10 Google Talks in the domains of business and economics from a multimodal perspective. It investigates how different (verbal and visual) semiotic modes are combined in Google Talks and, therefore, how these videos can be used as multimodal ESP materials for linguistic improvement and professional development. Drawing on the notion of intersemiotic complementarity, the study shows how verbal features can be integrated with still and moving visuals (charts, images, photographs, videos) and hand gestures (iconics, deictics, metaphorics) either to represent concrete data and figures, to explain more abstract concepts, or even to provoke the audience’s emotional reactions. The study demonstrates that, although each mode has its specific affordance, in Google Talks different modes synergistically concur to meaning-making and successful communication. Therefore, in ESP educational settings, they can be employed to develop students’ multimodal awareness in meaning-making processes, as well as to teach them how to exploit modes beyond verbal language to produce effective domain-specific text
“What are Miranda Rights?”: The Case of Video FAQs on a Criminal Law Firm Website
No full textThe last two decades have been characterized by a continual reshaping and hybridization of textual genres, thanks especially to the central role of the Internet for communicating and spreading information (Garzone, 2007). That is why there is an evident and ever-increasing need to explore the different settings in which knowledge circulates. Therefore, the present chapter aims to identify the specific linguistic devices and semiotic means that distinguish a peculiar popularizing genre that is often embedded in law firm Websites, i.e., the video FAQs (frequently asked questions). These expert to non-expert short videoclips, in which lawyers answer set questions about crucial legal issues, are rather unique as the specialized and professional knowledge they disseminate primarily has a promotional function. In fact, legal facts in the videos are not just simplified but popularized, meaning that they undergo a discursive reconstruction of their specialized knowledge to reach the widest possible audience of non-experts (Calsamiglia & van Dijk, 2004).
Specifically, this paper is a case study of the video FAQ section of the website of a big American law firm specializing in criminal law. For this purpose, a corpus of eighty video FAQs dealing with different topics in American criminal law was put together and analyzed. From a methodological point of view, both quantitative and qualitative methods are employed to investigate and describe the language of video FAQs with particular attention paid to popularizing strategies. The multimodal dimension of legal knowledge dissemination through promotional video FAQs is addressed when describing this new popularizing genre and is referred to in relevant cases in the qualitative analysis
Video Abstracts in EMP: A Corpus-Based Approach to the Analysis of Rhetorical Structure in Multimodal Medical Genres
No full textDevelopments in digital technologies have broadened the range of media forms of knowledge dissemination: blogs/forums, tweets, TED Talks, and video abstracts are examples of how researchers transcend the confines of research articles and reach an audience extending well beyond the members of their own research community. Yet this comes at a price for both researchers and ESP analysts: the former need to acquire specific competences to produce texts that make full use of full range of semiotic resources available in such media, while the latter need to develop methods for analyzing them for both research and teaching purposes. The present paper investigates a corpus-based approach to the Video Abstract, "a video presentation corresponding to a specific science research article, which typically communicates the background of a study, methods used, study results and potential implications through the use of images, audio, video clips, and text" (Spicer, 2014, p. 3). Drawing on established models for the analysis of the ESP genre (Swales, 2004) and multimodal discourse analysis (Baldry & Thibault, 2006; Kress & van Leeuwen [1996] 2006) the study builds on the author's previous work on video abstracts (Coccetta, 2020) using corpus-based methods to characterize the resource selection process – what choices authors actually make from the overall inventory of semiotic resources when deciding how best to communicate their research
"“As my Right Honourable Lady knows...”: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Prime Minister’s Question Time Comparing Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May"
No full textAccording to van Dijk (2014), the notion of knowledge is inextricably linked to discourse. He also notes that the study of discourse has become increasingly multimodal embracing not only the verbal but also the interplay of image, sound, gesture, facework, and body position during spoken interaction. As such, “knowledge may be acquired, presupposed and expressed in these many multimodal forms, and may directly influence the formation of multimodal mental models language users use to construe when they understand text and talk” (van Dijk, 2014, p. 10). Starting from this premise, the paper presents a comparative case-study on the multimodal construction of meaning during Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQs) (Bates et al., 2012) focusing on two historically significant PMQs: Theresa May’s before she announced her resignation (22nd May 2019) and Margaret Thatcher’s on the day of her resignation (22nd November 1990). As a political discourse genre, PMQs are extremely popular with the general public so much so that people can book their entry to the House of Commons’ Public Gallery to observe. They are also digitally available on the Parliament website, and thus easily accessible. Extracts drawn from original television recordings are examined, accounting for verbal and non-verbal cues using the multimodal annotation software ELAN (ELAN, 2020). The multimodal critical discourse analysis framework (Machin & Mayr, 2012), and the discourse-historical approach (DHA, Reisigl & Wodak, 2001) provide the theoretical backdrop necessary to address the following research questions: 1) In which ways do semiotic and verbal resources work together to produce meaning (Jewitt, 2014; Kress, 2013) in PMQs featuring Thatcher and May? and 2) How do these women leaders compare in terms of communicating political messages and disseminating “knowledge” in the context of the predominantly male parliamentary culture? Initial findings indicate that, despite occasional similarities regarding the employment of rhetorical strategies for persuasion, the two women leaders have very different ways of delivering their message, both on the verbal and non-verbal levels, thus producing an altogether different effect on their interlocutor and audience
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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